My life experience is that nerds, as a general rule, distrust politics almost totally.<\/p>\n
As we kick off our special election coverage, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a phenomenon worth thinking about.<\/p>\n
Part of it may be some seething resentment about elections being little more than popularity contests, whether the vote\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being cast for President, American Idol or Sophomore Class Treasurer.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, Cloris Leachman JUST NOW got booted from Dancing With the Stars and we all know that her longevity on the show had little to do with her rug-cutting ability.<\/p>\n
But beyond that basic unfairness, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our (geek) media that has poisoned us against government.\u00c2\u00a0 Superheroes exist to do the job that the government cannot or will not do.\u00c2\u00a0 OMAC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s corrupt, futuristic World That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Coming is intentionally not that far away from the world that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s here, and the idea that the only way to save the world is to have Buddy Blank tear it down \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an attractive simplicity to it, much like the Objectivism in Ditko\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Question and Mr. A stories.<\/p>\n
The cinema we watch, too, is rife with irresponsible government.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s action, sci-fi or fantasy, the idea that the system doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work is at the very foundation of the genre.\u00c2\u00a0 Star Wars, our ultimate sacred cow, is a six movie fable about the consequences of bad governance.<\/p>\n
This is why geeks love Ron Paul.\u00c2\u00a0 This is why we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother voting.\u00c2\u00a0 This is why Transmet fans have pegged every Presidential candidate in the past decade as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Smiler\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c because we know that the institution produces Smilers but that the Spiders that keep them in check don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exist, can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exist in an ecosystem of influence peddling and blatant pandering.<\/p>\n
Another reason?\u00c2\u00a0 As a bloc, we frequently find ourselves at odds with The Man, be it over the use of white spaces or videogames\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 status as murder simulators (in some capacity beyond Jefferson Stolarship totally killing on back-to-back Bon Jovi tunes in Rock Band.\u00c2\u00a0 That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t count).<\/p>\n
I think for cynic nerds like me that this election has been energizing, what with a longshot candidate who wants to change the way things work in Washington on the cusp of victory.\u00c2\u00a0 And I could probably be talking about either party there.<\/p>\n
So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my stodgy diatribe welcoming you all to Grok the Vote \u00e2\u20ac\u201c coverage continuing through November 4.\u00c2\u00a0 Keep reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My life experience is that nerds, as a general rule, distrust politics almost totally. As we kick off our special election coverage, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a phenomenon worth thinking about. Part of it may be some seething resentment about elections being little more than popularity contests, whether the vote\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being cast for President, American Idol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,49],"tags":[418,419],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitching","category-grok-the-vote","tag-grok-the-vote","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}